Pentagon Presents Latest Iraq Escalation as ‘Model’ for More Deployments

The escalation of the US ground war in Iraq looks to be on the precipice of a dramatic acceleration tonight, as Pentagon officials openly talk about their new plan, in which 450 new ground troops will be establishing a new US base on the outskirts of ISIS-held Ramadi, as a “model” to be repeated across Iraq.

These bases are being called “lily pad sites,” and the Pentagon says it is actively looking to establish another 3-4 such sites, with around 1,000 additional ground troops set to deploy for that, as the “next step.” The program will go on from there.

While the troops are nominally being sent to “advise” and “train” Iraqi forces, putting them within obvious shooting distance of major ISIS holdings is just the latest in a series of Pentagon efforts to get US forces enough in harm’s way to justify ground combat as “defensive” in nature.

Officials don’t seem to be too anxious to wait and see if the new deployment is actually a success, or even anything short of an unmitigated disaster, before declaring it a model for the rest of the country, seemingly entirely on the grounds that it will get more boots into Iraq faster than anything else.

President Obama also shrugged off questions about how long this war is liable to take, insisting not only that he doesn’t know, but that it’s impossible for anyone to know.

Author: Jason Ditz

The USG has gutted its manufacturing industry decades ago, so
war and trafficking arms and illegal drugs are big business for
this corrupt regime.

Richard Steven Hack

The purpose here is obvious: These small amounts of troops are simply BAIT for ISIS. Obama wants a number of US troops to get killed, so he can justify green lighting a full-scale return to Iraq with the attendant profits to his military-industrial complex masters in Chicago.